According NBCNews the family of a young Bay Area rapper who was killed when police officers opened fire after he had fallen asleep in his car is demanding the release of police bodycam footage and questioning whether deadly force was justified.
Police in Vallejo, California, said in a news release that the six officers shot “multiple rounds” at the driver — identified by his family as Willie McCoy, 20 — in the span of four seconds Saturday night in a Taco Bell parking lot. It’s unclear how many bullets struck McCoy, but his family said they believe at least 20 may have hit his car based on the number of holes that witnesses counted at the scene.
“It seems like an execution,” David Harrison, McCoy’s cousin and manager, said Wednesday. “It looks like my baby cousin was executed by a firing squad.”
The Vallejo Police Department said it is working with the Solano County District Attorney’s Office to investigate the shooting — the latest in a department that in recent years has been criticized for excessive use of force and has been the subject of civil rights complaints.
In a statement, Vallejo Police Chief Andrew Bidou said a review of the shooting is in its early stages, although “any loss of life is a tragedy.” The department did not identify McCoy in its statement.
Officials also declined further comment about any plans to release video from the incident and questions regarding police protocol. The department’s police union did not immediately respond to an email Wednesday.
Harrison said he’s not happy about a lack of information that has come out about his cousin’s death and is awaiting the results of an autopsy and toxicology report.
“It doesn’t take six officers to pump bullets through a car that’s not going anywhere,” he said.
Vallejo police said two patrol officers were first called to the Taco Bell after 10:30 p.m., when employees reported a driver slumped over in a car at the drive-thru.
Upon arrival, the officers said, they noticed a handgun in the driver’s lap and called for backup.
“The two officers decided to hold their position and did not attempt to wake the driver,” police said.
The officers discussed trying to remove the gun from the driver, but found his door locked. They also noticed the car was actually in drive, so additional units helped to position a marked patrol car in front of McCoy’s car “to prevent forward or erratic movement,” police said.
As a second car was being placed behind McCoy’s car to prevent him from making sudden movements, he woke up.
He said he didn’t know McCoy to own a firearm.
Lawmakers in California have pursued legislation that would set rules for when police can use deadly force and instead seek nonlethal alternatives to deescalate a situation — coming after the high-profile shooting last year of Stephon Clark, a black Sacramento man who police later confirmed was unarmed. Law enforcement groups, however, argue that officers make split-second decisions in potentially deadly situations, and that lethal force may need to be an option.
Police in Vallejo, a bedroom community north of San Francisco with a racially diverse population, have been under scrutiny in the past over officers’ actions.
Last August, the police department defended the use of force after video showed officers holding down a man and striking him outside of a restaurant.
In January, a police officer was seen tackling and handcuffing a black Marine veteran in a video that went viral. That officer was placed on leave.
The department has paid more per officer in civil rights cases than other local departments, the East Bay Express reported last year.
Harrison said his family is pained thinking about McCoy’s final moments and his likely bewilderment when police came upon him.
McCoy, the second youngest of five siblings, lost his parents to cancer at a young age and was raised by his cousins and a sister. He used music as an outlet to rap about family ties and the inequities in life.
“He was always talking about being able to escape in his music because a lot of experience living in the Bay Area is police brutality and racial profiling,” Harrison said. “It’s tragic that Willie didn’t escape it himself.”
